Author: Sophie Messager

Last week, I had the vision of this herb stripping tool pop in my mind. It’s a little gadget with different sized holes in it, through which you pull a strip of herbs to remove the leaves. This felt particularly weird because I had completely forgotten that I had it and hadn’t used it for years.

The vision clearly showed me that I was being stripped. Stripped of what no longer serves belongs. And that’s how I’ve been feeling for the last couple of months.

This feels both scary and exciting, like I’m being remade and remodelled into a new version of myself. The focus of my work is changing direction completely, going from being focused on mostly birth to supporting women to trust themselves, and I do not yet know what my new offerings will look like.

And of course, it’s doing it in its own sweet time (a bit like waiting to go into labour). There is nothing to do but wait, and trust. It feels really uncomfortable, and I oscillate between excitement and fear, quiet acceptance, and frustration. It’s a daily practice for me to work with the resistance, and to surrender into the unknown.

Being stripped is a normal, regular occurrence.

It is a fact for many of us, life has a way of stripping us down. If you’re navigating new motherhood, menopause, career changes, or any other major life shift, there are times when everything you thought you knew about yourself gets turned upside down. I know this very well myself, as someone who evolved from a scientist to an antenatal teacher and doula, to an energy healer and shamanic drummer, and mentor/guide to women during life transitions.

During my own journey from scientist to spiritual guide, I discovered that drumming is one of my most powerful practices. What started with scepticism and disbelief evolved into understanding of how drumming can literally rewire our nervous systems and help us reconnect with our authentic selves.

If you are feeling overwhelmed and disconnected, if it feels like you’re losing yourself in the chaos of change, drumming might be just the thing you need to reconnect with your inner wisdom. In this space, you can reconnect with a sense of presence and inner peace, from which you can navigate change without the sense of being overwhelmed and scrambling for quick solutions that come from a dysregulated nervous system. 

Here are ten ways drumming can support you through life transitions.

1. Nervous system regulation

When life feels out of control, our nervous system often gets stuck in fight-or-flight mode. From that place you can not feel safe, be creative, or think rationally. Drumming helps to regulate your autonomic nervous system, shifting you from hypervigilance to a calmer, more grounded state. The repetitive rhythm literally entrains your brainwaves, moving you from gamma/beta (stress) to alpha (relaxed alertness) state.

This is particularly powerful for women experiencing perimenopause, new motherhood, or any major life metamorphosis where stress hormones can run high.

“Most studies have shown an improvement in psychological health of an individual, with lower stress levels, less anxiety, better mood, higher energy levels and feelings of empowerment.”  Yap et al. A systematic review on the effects of active participation in rhythm-centred music making on different aspects of health, 2017

2. Accessing your inner wisdom

Many accomplished women (myself included) have learned to rely almost entirely on our analytical minds. But during major transitions, logic alone doesn’t work. Drumming bypasses the prefrontal cortex and engages deeper brain regions (and the body!) where intuition lives. Percussion rhythms create a trance-like state that allows you to tap into your inner knowing.

Imagine a murky pond with sediment clouding the water: this is your analytical mind, cluttered with thoughts that obscure clarity.

When you strain to see through the murky depths, forcing answers to emerge, you only stir up more sediment. The harder you grasp for insights, the cloudier everything becomes, like when you are frantically searching for a forgotten word.

Drumming creates gentle ripples on the surface that gradually allow the sediment to settle rather than stirring it up. As you stop straining to find answers, they become visible on their own. Your inner wisdom emerges as your analytical mind relaxes its grip.

The drum effortlessly stills the waters of the mind, allowing insights to surface naturally. The answers were always there, waiting for your mind to settle. 

3. Release of trauma and tension

Drumming is a full-body experience that helps release trauma stored in your nervous system. The act of striking the drum, combined with the sounds and vibrations, helps your body to move stuck energy and emotions. This somatic release is particularly important for women who’ve experienced birth trauma, relationship endings, or other life upheavals.

One of the most powerful sets of associations created in utero is the association between patterned repetitive rhythmic activity from maternal heart rate, and all the neural patterns of activity associated with not being hungry, not being thirsty, and feeling ‘safe’ (in the womb)… Rhythm is regulating. All cultures have some form of patterned, repetitive rhythmic activity as part of their healing and mourning rituals – dancing, drumming, and swaying. Dr Bruce Perry

4. Rebuilding your sense of power

There’s something primal and empowering about drumming. When life has left you feeling powerless, it reconnects you with your strength. The act of making sound and rhythm, reminds you that you have autonomy and agency—that you can create, influence, and direct energy.

This is especially healing for women who’ve been in situations where they felt voiceless or powerless.

At home, I felt in my own space but in the hospital, I felt at the system’s mercy and a lot of vulnerability. The drumming stirred up the empowerment and standing up for myself. The drum calls upon strength and authenticity and celebration. The drumming felt like when you are jogging and you have power music on, it gave me a power boost, like it was saying, ‘Open up, relax, trust your body, have faith in the journey.’ It made me feel more confident in my abilities. Leigh (about how having me drumming during her birth made her feel).

5. Creating space for grief and processing

Transitions always involve loss, and even positive changes require us to let go of who we used to be. Drumming creates a sacred container for grief, allowing you to honour what you’re leaving behind while opening space for what’s emerging. It holds you safe as you feel deeply.

I’ve seen women use drumming to process everything from divorce to career changes to the loss of their pre-motherhood identity.

When drumming, the drum becomes an extension of your body. Each beat, when we drop into it, tells the story of how we are feeling, what we are going through and what we need without words. As we drum, particularly with other women in a safe space, that freedom of expression seems to spread into the body itself, creating movement, shaking, dancing, stamping – somatically allowing emotion, trauma and tension to move, be seen and perhaps released. Then that beat and safe space spreads to the voice. It opens up the throat, our space of authentic truth. It allows us to let out that which is held within – in roars, tears, tones, words and song. Melonie Syrett

6. Connecting with your authentic self

When you’re stripped of familiar roles and identities, drumming helps you reconnect with your authentic self, with the part of you that exists beyond the mother, the wife, the professional, the daughter, or any other roles. In the beat of the drum, you meet yourself as pure creative energy, beyond societal expectations.

This is transformative for women who’ve lost themselves in pleasing others or conforming to external expectations.

7. Building resilience

Like meditation, drumming builds your capacity to stay present with difficult feelings and emotions. As you learn to come back to the beat, to the rhythm, when your mind wanders or emotions arise, you develop the same skill for navigating real life challenges. This becomes a resource you can draw upon during tough times.

The drum becomes a teacher in staying grounded when everything else feels unstable.

8. Activating your creativity

Many women in transition feel stuck, creatively blocked or uninspired. Drumming allows you to tap into your creativity, the same energy that births babies, builds businesses, and creates art. This spills over into other areas of life, helping you imagine new possibilities for your future.

The trance-like state can open up channels for intuitive insights and creative inspiration. People can experience heightened intuition, artistic expression, or innovative solutions to problems during or after a drum session or journey. These days when I encounter a problem, I make a mental note to “drum on it”.

I’ve seen women rediscover their artistic gifts, start new businesses, and make bold life changes after beginning a drumming practice.

9. Connecting with something greater than yourself

Drumming has been used for thousands of years to connect with the divine, the ancestors, and the natural world. When you’re feeling isolated or questioning your place in the world, drumming can restore your sense of connection to something larger than yourself, whether you call it God, the universe, or your own inner knowing.

This spiritual connection provides comfort and guidance during times of uncertainty.

10. Integrating science and spirituality

For analytical women who are opening to spiritual dimensions (like I was), drumming offers the perfect bridge. Drumming is backed by cutting edge neuroscience research showing its benefits for brain health, stress reduction, and emotional regulation, while also being a deeply spiritual practice. You don’t have to choose between your rational mind and your spiritual heart, you can integrate both.

This integration is particularly powerful for women, who like me, have been taught that science and spirituality are incompatible.

How do I begin?

If you’re in a life transition and feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, or like you’re losing yourself, I’m inviting you to explore drumming. You don’t need to be musical or have any experience, just an openness to try and let it guide you back to yourself.

It is simple: find a drum (even tapping on a book or desk will work), put on a timer for 5 minutes, sit quietly, and begin with an intuitive, heartbeat-like rhythm. Let yourself feel the sounds and vibrations, notice what emotions arise, and trust the process.

Your authentic self is waiting to meet you in the drumming. Sometimes, when the analytical mind fails and logic falls short, the wisdom of the drum can guide you back to yourself.

Remember: You’re not broken, you’re breaking open. The drum can help you trust that process.

If this resonates with you, I’d love to hear what that feels like. Please comment below. And you’d like to explore how drumming, along with other neuroscience-backed holistic practices, can support your journey through life transitions, I’d love to connect with you. Or check out my drum mentoring sessions, or my new book, The Beat of Your Own Drum.

This month, on the 27th of June, my new book The Beat Of Your Own Drum, the history, science and contemporary use of drumming as a path for women’s wisdom, health, and transformation, will become available to pre-order from Womancraft publishing.

I’m going to be sharing more (including excerpts from the book and the exclusive conversations and freebies accompanying it) as we approach the prelaunch date, but today I want to share with you why I wrote this book.

The beginning

My journey with the drum is deeply rooted in my doula journey. I was first introduced to shamanic drumming at a doula retreat in 2013. I was utterly sceptical about drumming, convinced that it wouldn’t work (I even thought it was bullshit), until I experienced a shamanic drum journey during the retreat. I had such vivid visions, and loved how the drum made me feel so much, that I instantly wanted one of my own. My mother gifted me an Irish Bodhran, and the rest is history. As I write this, I own close to 30 drums, and I have been running drum circles for 5 years, I have drummed during births and written an article about drumming and birth in a scientific journal, drummed at 2 midwifery conferences, delivered talks at drumming conventions, and of course I’ve written this book.

There is so much to share, and I cannot fit it all in one article, so I’ll be writing more in the runner up to the pre launch and over the summer until the book becomes physically available in September. I’m going to share a brief version of my story and also some of the wonderful effects that drumming provides for women going through transformation (such as, but not limited to), birth.

After I got my first drum, the most challenging aspect was overcoming impostor syndrome, something I see in almost all of the women who start their work with the drum. We live in such a patriarchal society, where we are unconsciously made to believe that there is a “right” way to do something, and that we cannot do it unless we have been formally trained in it. This leads to not feeling good enough and not daring to drum. Add to this the systemic historical suppression of women’s expression (including drumming) and voices, it’s not surprising that drumming does not feel safe for a lot of women.

Looking back I’m really glad I experienced this because it gives me a lot of empathy and understanding for the women who come to me to grow their drumming skills, and who experience the same. 12 years down the line, drumming feels as natural to me as breathing. You can read part of that story in more detail (up to 2020) in my article called Drum healing, bullshit?

It all started with birth

Drumming became a part of the work I did with women as a doula, first during postpartum closing the bones massage rituals , then during pregnancy rituals and healings, and finally during births. I started yearning to drum for women during labour and births, eventually doing so in 2019, and then getting hired specifically for this purpose. It came completely from within, as I could not find anything written about it at the time.

 When I decided to start writing this book, in the summer of 2022, I first intended it to be about drumming and birth exclusively, and planned to submit the proposal to the same publisher as my first book, Why Postnatal Recovery Matters. I am very grateful to my friend Bridget Supple, who not only suggested I broaden the topic of the book, but also suggested that I attend a zoom meeting for prospective authors hosted by Lucy Pearce of Womancraft Publishing. Not only did I absolutely loved Womancraft’s ethos, but I felt a deep resonance for Lucy’s approach. I wrote 4 chapters in a month to meet the proposal deadline, and both this and Lucy’s feedback confirmed that the book needed to be much broader than just birth.

Since I left doula work, I’ve started to see in a crystal clear way how the coercive behaviour we see in maternity care is just the reflection of a deeper, society wide issue. 

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction chapter of the book.

“Since stepping away from doula work a couple of years ago, I’ve come to the stark realisation that not only is the current maternity care system beyond repair, but that the thread of disempowerment weaves through every stage of a woman’s life. Its pervasive narrative that begins in infancy, winds its way through our experiences of parenting, education and careers. This insidious message – that we are somehow ignorant of our own needs and should defer to those who ‘know better’ – isn’t confined to any one sphere. It permeates politics, the medical and education world and is woven into the very fabric

of our society. From the moment we’re born, we’re subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) taught to doubt our own instincts, to question our inner wisdom. It’s as if society has conspired to whisper in our ears, “You don’t know what’s best for you.” This message echoes in the halls of schools, reverberates in workplaces and finds its way into the most intimate moments of our lives.

The result? A deep-seated, often unconscious belief that our own knowledge – especially when it comes to our bodies, our choices, our lives – is somehow inferior to the ‘experts’. This belief chips away at our autonomy, erodes our confidence in our own experiences and intuition. And it’s a belief that I’ve come to recognise as not just false, but deeply harmful to the wellbeing and empowerment of women everywhere.”

The  heart of why the book’s message is: the drum provides us with a path back to our innate ways of knowing. 

“Drumming, because of its ability to modify our state of consciousness, can help us get out of a rational, masculine-centric way of thinking and re-learn how to access a more intuitive, more feminine way of knowing. Drumming can provide an antidote, not only to the ever-increasing speed and business of our world, but also to the systematic destruction of women’s power and autonomy.

What we need most at this moment in time, to heal ourselves and to heal the earth, is to support women to stand in their true power. The power that resides within us, in our ability to trust ourselves and know what’s right for us, rather than abdicating knowledge and power over to the system. What we need is to support a feminine way of accessing knowledge… Drumming offers a way back in through the layers of parenting, education and societal conditioning that have eroded our self-knowing. Reclaiming this knowing is critically needed in a culture that conditions women from childhood to seek truth outside rather than within.

“As we drum, we don’t just think differently – we experience the world differently. This altered state of being opens doorways to new perspectives, allowing us to imagine and embody alternatives to the limiting narratives that have been unconsciously programmed into us. In essence, drumming doesn’t just challenge the system – it transports us beyond it, offering an experience of what true autonomy and connection feel like.” Sophie Messager

Here are the chapters of the book

Foreword

Introduction: The First Beat 

1 – Rhythms of Awakening: My journey with the drum 

2 – Echoes Through Time: A short history of women and drumming 

3 – Vibrations of Wellbeing: The science of drumming and physical health

4 – Percussion and the Psyche: Drumming’s resonance in brain, nerves and healing

5 – Diverse Frequencies: How drumming supports people who are neurodivergent

6 – Beating the ‘Shroom: Drumming as an alternative to psychedelics

7 – Sacred Circles: Drumming, rituals and ceremonies

8 – The Rhythm of New Life: Drumming to support the birth journey

9 – Tuning into Your Instrument: Finding a drum

10 – Rhythmic Practices: Ways to work with the drum and drumming

Conclusion: Echoes into the Future

Appendix

I had the drum below made to carry the energy of the book, and women back to the drum.

You can pre-order the book here, which gives you access to 3 exclusive bonuses

I’d love to hear from you: What resonates with you about this message? Have you ever felt that disconnect from your own inner knowing? Or perhaps you’ve found your own path back to trusting yourself – whether through drumming or something else entirely?

Write a comment below and share your thoughts with me. Your stories and reflections help shape this work, and I read every response personally.